Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic multisystemdisease of unknown cause which affects approximately1% of the population. The typical characteristic ofRA is persistent inflammatory synovitis which usuallyinvolves peripheral joints in a symmetric distribution.Systemic involvements of RA include pericarditis,pleuritis, vasculitis, entrapment neuropathy, interstitiallung disease and Sjogren and Felty syndromes.Echocardiographic and postmortem studies have shownthat RA affects pericardium in nearly 50% of the patients.However, cardiac tamponade is a rare complicationof RA. In this report, we present a surgically-treated61-year-old female patient with cardiac tamponadesecondary to loculated pericardial effusion.
展开▼
